Deportees

(album: 30 Years A-Greying - 1992)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps
You're flying them back to the Mexico border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
All they will call you will be deportees

My father's own father, he waded that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck 'til they took down and died

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
All they will call you will be deportees

Some of us are illegal and some are not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
All they will call you will be deportees

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
All they will call you will be deportees

A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
A fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who were all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio saids they are just deportees

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
All they will call you will be deportees

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves and rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?

Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
All they will call you will be deportees
All they will call you will be deportees